Colin Stetson is a force of nature. There are no two ways about it. This Canadian alto/tenor/bass saxophone and contrabass clarinet player has been making records from his studio in the woods of Vermont and when he's not playing on somebody else's record, or doing his metal projext Ex-Eye, or guesting with Arcade Fire or playing in duo with his partner Sarah Neufeld (Arcade Fire's violinist), he's either playing solo shows or recording this incredible music made uniquely with his instrument and his body, which are technically the same, or an extension of each other.
After his incredible trilogy of solo records and his beautiful Gorecki "Sorrow" symphony album, Colin is back with another masterpiece of physicality. But before we get into WHAT he does and HOW he does it, let's talk about what it sounds like. The music is beautiful. It's like the soundtrack for a Siberian landscape where something, or a whole herd of somethings, is inexorably advancing towards you and you don't know what it is. It can be scary, haunting and tense but once you embrace it it's also deeply calming and mesmerizing. There is rhythm and there is sound, there is tone and, yes there are melody lines that appear in the distance, like through the fog...
If you don't know what he's doing you'll assume there are overdubs of percussions, vocals and different types/sizes of saxophones, but in reality everything you hear is recorded live, without any overdubs or loops, and with a deep commandeering of his respiratory apparatus, which he puts through the wringer with seemingly endless circular breathing excercises that allow him to play a 13 minute song without ever breathing in once! He gets all these sounds by putting different mics on different parts of the saxophone and of his neck and his chest so that he can play the sax, while hitting the keys to achieve percussive sounds, while singing muffled melodies with his throat. It's truly special and unique.
Colin is one of my favorite musicians and I urge you to see him live to REALLY fully understand how amazing he is. His live performances are even more deeply transforming, transporting and transfigurating than his beautiful records and when you see him do his thing live, when you see his face get all red, his lungs contract and expand, his carotid artery bulge out like it's about to burst and his sweat drip, and all this while NOT using any loop pedals, NOT using any pre-recorded music, NOT using any band, and while NOT breathing, THEN and ONLY THEN you will truly understand!
Masterful!

The eccentric martian Tokyo-based artist known as Coppé relentlessly keeps putting out little jewels of electronic music, this time mixed with her beloved jazz influences (something she loves doing). After her 20th anniversary record of last year, her new album "Milk" is a collection of electronic renditions of jazz standards from the 20es and 30es such as "My Funny Valentine" or Gershwin's "The Man I Love" plus some original material. Aside from her rich sultry voice and her electronic production, several tracks feature live double bass by Jeff Curry and one track has drums by Zak Bond and piano by Fredric Viennot which adds to the overall jazz charm of this release. Other unique moments are the opener, which was recorded with 73 various microphones, and a few collaborations with MCs and other electronic producers from Japan and the US. When listening to some of these tracks one can't fail to draw a parallel between the smokey atmospheres of trip hop bands such as Portishead and electronic female-fronted artists such as Bjork, so if you can imagine what those two artists would sound like if they collaborated, you might have a decent idea of what "Milk" sounds like.
"Milk" is available on CD (with a sleek die cut cover art work), very limited edition vinyls (every copy has a unique design with color on color pressing and colored vinyl) and as a download. Check it out!

This new release coming your way from the British/Italian subscription-based label 19'40" is one that prominently features percussionist Sebastiano De Gennaro (who is also part label owner and part recording/editing engineer/producer on this CD) as the sole performer (except for a couple of violin/viola parts played by Yoko Morimyo) of a repertoire that includes five pieces by Louis Andriessen, Edmund Campion, David Lange, the great Enrico Gabrielli (the other one third label owner) and Nikolay Popov.

If the composers' name don't give it away, rest assured you are in for 35-40 minutes of stochastic, angular, unapologetic, contemporary pioneering experimental music that pays tribute to the woodpecker (english word for "picchio"), the bird who sometimes annoingly and persistently pecks away at trees in the forest, making noise all by himself, bothering the peace and the other birds but also making himself known as the percussionist of the forest, the pace-setter, the one who provides the rhythm to the ornithological spiecies' songs and calls; I guess this is also how De Gennaro thinks of himself.

The opening piece of the album (written in 1999 by Dutch composer Louis Andriessen) entitled "Woodpecker" couldn't be more adeptly placed and chosen, especially since it features 6 wood blocks, 5 temple blocks and a xylophone (only wood instruments).
From the rhythmic and time-enforced confines of that, the second track ventures into a much more open and outlandish avant-garde territory with a piece by American Edmund Campion origially written for tape loops and vibraphone. Then the most well known of these composers, the American Bang On A Can co-founder David Lang, takes center place with his "Unchained Melody" for 7 glockenspiel bars, 7 noises and one nasty metal, which comes off as the most glitchy and electronic of the bunch, especially since the performer has decided to use some Teenage Engineering 8 bit noises as the 7 noises to be played along with the 7 glock bars (removed form the frame of the instrument and placed side by side). Then we get to my favorite composer of the bunch: Enrico Gabrielli, who borrows from linguistics and from chemistry to title his new 2017 composition "Coppia di Allotropi (Pair of Allotropes)" originally written for violin, cello and piano but specifically re-worked for De Gennaro to be played on xylophone, non-tempered balafon, vibraphone, drum-pad violin and viola. The CD closes with another millennial piece by Russian Nikolay Popov entitled "Artra" and based on the two golden discs that were sent into space by NASA on the outer solar space exploration vessels Voyager 1 and 2 in 1977 (coincidentally these two 12 inch discs have recenly been reissued by Ozma records).

Don't let me forget to mention that the CD comes in a limited hand-numbered edition of 200 copies in the beautiful origami folding carboard packaging that 19'40" has accustomed us to expect. Make sure you get a subscription so you can get this and the upcoming releases!

"Histoire du Soldat / Storia di un Soldato" is a live recording of Russian composer Igor Stravinsky's 1918 work with Italian text for seven instruments and narrator and it is the second installment in the subscription-based UK/Italian label 19m40s.
The original piece was premiered in Lausanne Switzerland while the composer lived there in exile and was supposed to be travelling through Europe with an ensemble of 7 musicians in a carriage (the origins of live concert touring maybe?) but due to financial constraints and the Spanish flu it was never performed again while the composer was alive. However it became an important piece in his repertoir that was later played around the world and in particular in French (with the original libretto by CHarles-Ferdinand Ramuz) and in Italian.
Esecutori di Metallo Su Carta, is a fresh collaborative new music ensemble based in Italy but open to outside collaborations and personnel. In this version of the ensemble, its original founder Enrico Gabrielli and Sebastiano De Gennaro play the clarinet and percussions respectively and are joined by Japanese first violinist Yoko Morimyo and four other italian musicians, a conductor and narrator Stefano Panzieri.
The premiere of this piece by this group took place at the "Fuck Bloom! Alban Berg!" festival at Bloom Club in Mezzago and was recorded live in an ex-church .
I suppose if you don't speak Italian this might be a less exciting listening experience (unless it is true, as they say, that italian is a very musical language you can enjoy even if you don't speak it...) but the CD booklet comes with a summary of the libretto as well as some background notes on the composer, the ensemble and the composition.
The CD comes in a beautiful packaging and is limited to 200 hand-numbered copies so if you want one you better head over to the label's website and subscribe to one of their four plans to make sure you get their releases.

Enrico Gabrielli, the mastermind behind "Esecutori di Metallo su Carta", is one of my absolute favorite musicians/arrangers/multi-instrumentalists in Italy, a true artist who knows how to change, evolve, re-discover and re-invent himself within the scope of his career and the passing of time. He is a multi-instrumentalist (piano, reeds, percussions) and has played with some of the most interesting Italian bands (Afterhours, Mariposa, Baustelle, Calibro35) as well as international artists (Mike Patton's Mondo Cane, John Parish, Daniel Johnston, PJ Harvey).

Of course he also has his own projects, like Der Maurer and this latest one: Esecutori di Metallo su Carta, a chamber ensemble which plays his classical re-interpretations of tunes by some of the most interesting alternative/metal/noise/experimental bands from Italy (such as Zeus!, Aucan, Zu, Appaloosa, Morkobot, Hobocombo, Meteor, Bologna Violenta, Julie's Haircut and Fuzz Orchestra).
These arrangments feature oboe, bass clarinet, trombone, tenor tuba, violin, percussions and piano and take you on a wild ride of music that has a very visionary and cinematic feel to it but can also take a very "neue musik" turn that will appeal to the most accultured and trained of ears.
The extensive and very interesting liner notes explain that this CD also serves as a hypothesis "that those bizzare tunes [...] could demonstrate a striking similarity to the experiments born under the umbrella of the so-called contemporary classical music [..] and demonstrate a shocking affinity between the brainwaves of those alt-rock musicians and the ideas of such composers as Louis Andriessen, Magnus Lindberg, David Lang, even Chales Ives, to name a few". Of course the CD also can and should serve as an impetus, trigger or excuse to go and research the original tunes by these amazing bands, which are a whole other universe of their own.

This CD comes in a beautiful hand-numbered cardboard fold out CD enclosure and actually represent the first release by the subscription-based record label 19'40" which is based in the UK and was created by Enrico Gabrielli himself together with Sebastiano De Gennaro and Francesco Fusaro. The label aims to put out one new release every 4 months and has 4 subscription plans to choose from that range from 60 euros to 160 euros. I highly recommend you subscribe (as I did) before these limited editions run out!